Al Jazeera unplugs English site

FrankBarnako

QATAR (CBS.MW) - The Arabic-language all news television channel, Al Jazeera, has reportedly taken a recently launched English version of its Web site offline after attacks by hackers and huge increases in traffic to its Arabic-language Web site, Aljazeera.net. Visitors to English.aljazeera.net are redirected to the original site.

Keynote Systems
KEYN
a firm which analyzes the performance of Web sites, reported Aljazeera.net has been available 95 percent of the time the past several days. "The Internet and the Web as a whole are not showing any problems," the company reported.

Lycos
TRLY
says Al-Jazeera and various misspellings of its name were its top search term last week. Google said Al-Jazeera was the term that showed the biggest increase last week.

Internet radio product in development

Rochelle Communications of Austin, Texas said it would introduce a standalone Internet radio by June. Model 2600, to be priced at $129, will support an Ethernet computer network connection and have optional Wi-Fi capability. "The radio brings one of the fastest-growing Internet technologies, audio streaming, to the reach of the masses," said Gilbert Amine, president and CEO. "My mom can now listen to her favorite international broadcasts from the comfort of her living room."

Microsoft backs Internet telephony

Your next PDA could include a phone. Microsoft
MSFT, -0.71%
announced support Wednesday for Internet telephony in its Windows CE .NET operating system software. Casio Computers, NEC and Hitachi are among the ready to produce Internet Protocol phone devices. The Microsoft strategy is aimed at business users. Devices which can operate using the OS include personal digital assistants and multimedia-capable consumer electronics

Online sales rose in first quarter

Online shopping sales were stronger in the first quarter of this year than last, heading into negative territory only two days in mid-March as the Iraq war was beginning. BizRate.com, an e-commerce research firm, reported sales of $12.84 billion online. That is 27 percent greater than sales during the first quarter of 2002. "Online shopping is thriving in both war and peacetime," said Chuck Davis, president. "This was a planned war and therefore online retail disruption was minimize, compared to the shock of 9/11 when sales fell 37 percent."

States sue online cigarette sellers

California, Washington and Oregon have filed civil suits against Internet companies selling cigarettes online. California says it caught five sellers in sting operations in which they allowed minors to use their parents' credit cards to buy cigarettes, the Associated Press reported. Washington and Oregon filed similar suits, and additional suits are anticipated. They accuse the companies of undermining states' efforts to reduce smoking by minors.

Travelocity expands business offering

Travelocity said it was starting a business travel service which can lower costs for small and medium-sized businesses. Ellen Keszler, a former senior vice president of the Sabre Travel Network, was named to head up the new venture, Travelocity Business. "This product is perfect for the company that wants to provide (employees) the widest range of options while better controlling their travel expenses," she said.

Online Hispanics draw attention

Nielsen NetRatings
NTRT
and Univision Online Inc. said they would work jointly to improve measurement of Hispanic consumers' online behavior. Univision
UVN, +11.11%
operates Univision.com, a popular Spanish-language Web site. NetRatings will offer its Web measurement technology to a panel of 3,600 Hispanics. The resulting data will be included in NetRatings' reports.

AOL offers Iraq War troop alerts

America Online said it will send war news alerts to members who are interested in activities of specific military units active in Iraq. The updates can be delivered online or as a text message on wireless phones or pagers, the AOL Time Warner
AOL
said. AOL said 3.8 million people now use its Alerts & Reminders feature for notifications of news and events.

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